She rolled her eyes. “It figures all you’d be thinkin’ about is satisfying your stomach.”
“I think of lots of other things too.”
“Like what?”
“My job and making my quota of cars sold every month.”
“That’s important all right; or else we wouldn’t have money to buy food and pay the bills.” She ate some of her microwave-baked potatoes and blotted her lips with a napkin. “Do you want me to look for a job so there’s not so much pressure on you to provide for us? I could see if one of the stores in the area might be hiring.”
Earl shook his head. “With the trouble you have with your leg, you’d never last eight, six, or even four hours of having to stand on your feet.”
“I could look for a sit-down job, although I don’t know what it could be.”
“There’s no need for that. I’ve been providing for us since we got married, and I will continue to do so.”
“You’re such a nice man—always thinking of me.”
“That’s ’cause I love you, Ginny.”
“I love you too, but please don’t call me Ginny. My first husband used to call me that, but I’ve always preferred to be called Virginia.”
“Okay, got it.”
Virginia didn’t want any reminders of her past or the man she had come to despise. She’d never admitted it to anyone or even said it out loud, but she’d been relieved when her first husband died.
“Sure is a nice evening for a bonfire.” Earl’s comment pulled Virginia’s thoughts aside.
“Huh? What does a bonfire have to do with anything?”
“When I arrived home from work and got out of my truck, I noticed there was a bonfire going across the street. Figured it must be some kind of a young people’s gathering at the Kings’ place.”
She wrinkled her nose. “More horse droppings in the road, no doubt.”
“That could be a good thing. If I go out there and shovel it up, we’ll have more manure for our compost pile.”
She pressed her hands against her ears. “This is not good table talk.”
“You brought it up, not me.”
Virginia shrugged and let her hands fall into her lap. “Guess I did. From now on, I’ll have to be more careful how I choose my words.”
Gratz, Pennsylvania
Dennis Weaver sat in the barn, with a gas lantern above him, staring at his father’s empty horse stall. It was unbelievable to think that the horse had died the same day as his dad.
Dennis, now thirty-one, had loved being around horses since he was a young boy. He had a special way with them too. With a little patience and time well spent, he could get most horses to do pretty much anything he wanted. While Dennis wasn’t what some would call a “horse whisperer,” he had an understanding of them, which led to respect and obedience on the horses’ part.
In time, when many of the Plain people in his community saw what he could do with his own family’s horses, they began to offer him payment to train their horses to pull their buggies. By the age of sixteen, after Dennis finished his eighth-grade education, he trained horses part-time when he wasn’t helping his dad on the farm. As more people moved into the area, his business picked up. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough Amish in the area to provide Dennis with a fulltime income. Even after his dad passed away and his brother, Gerald, took over the farm, Dennis helped out.
His greatest wish was to not only train horses fulltime, but raise them as well. Dennis was convinced, however, that he’d have to move to an area where there were more people in need of his type of services if he wanted his business to succeed. So he’d asked around and decided that Lancaster County would be a good place to move. There was really nothing keeping him here. He had no wife or children—just his mother and four siblings, who were all married and had families of their own.
Dennis felt secure in the knowledge that if he moved away, Mom would be cared for. She’d have his brother and three sisters, as well as ten grandchildren to fuss over and spend time with. Soon after Dad died, Gerald had built a daadihaus for Mom, and then he and his family moved into the larger home that used to be their parents’.
Dennis moved from the empty stall over to where his own horse was kept. “How’s it goin’ today, Midnight? Are ya ready for me to extinguish the lantern?”
Midnight whinnied as if in response, and then the gentle gelding nuzzled Dennis’s hand with his nose.
He grinned and rubbed the horse behind his ears.
Dennis stood by the stall door for a few minutes, contemplating his future. He’d grown up in Dauphin County but was more than ready for a change. Maybe the Lancaster area would be a good place for me to relocate.
Dennis knew only a few people in Lancaster County. He had a friend he’d gone to school with who lived in Ronks now.
Maybe I’ll contact James and see if I can stay with him for a few weeks, until I find a place of my own or a house I can rent. It would need to have enough property where I could train horses and hopefully raise a few of my own.
Although Dennis had saved up some money over the years, he didn’t have enough to pay cash for a home and didn’t want to go into debt. Renting a place would be a better choice for now.
Think I’ll give James a call in the morning and see what he says about my idea to relocate to Lancaster County. If he thinks it would be a good move for me and offers to let me stay there for a while, I’ll pack up my things and make the move by early spring.
Dennis turned off the lamp overhead and strolled out of the barn, letting the flashlight he now held be his guide back to the house. He paused and stared up at the twinkling stars overhead. I have no idea what the future holds for me, but anything would be better than staying here with all the haunting memories from the past that are never far from my mind.
Strasburg
This is one of my favorite recipes. Sylvia spread the crust batter for Cherry Melt Away Bars into a 9” x 13” inch pan. Picking up a quart of cherry pie filling Mom had bought at the store recently, she poured it on top. Normally, when the pie cherries in Mom’s yard ripened, Sylvia and Amy helped to make the filling and processed it all in canning jars. But due to losing their loved ones in the spring and the busyness that followed, they hadn’t done anything with the fruit. So the whole tree had been a happy place for the robins that came into their yard. Hopefully, this year things would go better in that regard and they’d have plenty of home-canned cherry pie filling to use in special desserts.
As Sylvia beat the eggs whites with cream of tartar, she glanced at her children sitting on a throw rug across the room playing with some pots and pans as though they were drums. In times past, this kind of noise would have given Sylvia a headache, but today she wasn’t bothered by the pounding. It was nice to see Allen and Rachel, who were only two and a half years apart, getting along well with each other.
Once the egg whites were stiff enough, she gradually beat in some sugar and vanilla, then spread it over the filling she’d previously put on top of the crust. Before sprinkling chopped walnuts over the top, Sylvia paused to look out the kitchen window. One of her guilty pleasures was walnuts, of which she grabbed a handful to munch on. While pausing to enjoy the crunchy texture and hearty flavor, she saw Mom heading in the direction of the greenhouse and Amy going down the driveway toward the phone shed. They both walked with a spring in their step, with arms swinging at their sides. No doubt they felt the exhilaration of the lovely weather that had greeted them on this twenty-first day of March. From the way Mom and Amy had talked during breakfast, they looked forward to opening the greenhouse today.